All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do.

Actually, I don't think that's appropriate at all. I doubt that many here would seriously argue that C or sh is actually easier to program in than Perl 5 (for most tasks). And yet Perl 5 has far more features than C or sh.

How much is "in a language" is very close to irrelevant. What matters is *what* is in it. That's why DMR says "some that do". It's not the magnitude of the feature vector; it's the direction it

And, after two decades of getting that
direction right, doesn't it seem unlikely that
he's now going to turn around and head off in
some random counterproductive direction. Hasn't
he earned a little more of our trust than that?

Actually, I don't think that's appropriate at all. I doubt that many here would seriously argue that C or sh is actually easier to program in than Perl 5 (for most tasks). And yet Perl 5 has far more features than C or sh.

Well, I guess it's a good thing that neither I, nor as you point out, Dennis Ritchie, makes the point that a language that has more features is necessarily harder to program in.

I was reminded of the Ritchie quote, however, because, to me, you seemed to be implying that a language that h

Look, I'm not really against Perl 6, but I am skeptical. The whole
process seems to be the opposite of what has made Perl 5 so successful,
incremental development with rigorous field testing.

But that's precisely how we *are* developing Perl 6. Almost all of
the new features we're folding in are either taken directly from, or
refactored from syntheses of, existing modules or programming idioms.
Here's a partial list of the rigorously field-tested modules whose
useful functionality we are in